about ten thousand flat bricks or tablets, all written over with Assyrian
characters. They contain a record of the history, the laws, and the religion
of Assyria, of the greatest value. These strange clay leaves found in the
royal library form the most valuable of all the treasuries of the literature of
the old world. The library contains also old Accadian documents, which
are the oldest extant documents in the world, dating as far back as
probably about the time of Abraham. (See SARGON.)
“The Assyrian royalty is, perhaps, the most luxurious of our century
[reign of Assur-bani-pa]...Its victories and conquests, uninterrupted for
one hundred years, have enriched it with the spoil of twenty peoples.
Sargon has taken what remained to the Hittites; Sennacherib overcame
Chaldea, and the treasures of Babylon were transferred to his coffers;
Esarhaddon and Assur-bani-pal himself have pillaged Egypt and her great
cities, Sais, Memphis, and Thebes of the hundred gates...Now foreign
merchants flock into Nineveh, bringing with them the most valuable
productions from all countries, gold and perfume from South Arabia and
the Chaldean Sea, Egyptian linen and glass-work, carved enamels,
goldsmiths’ work, tin, silver, Phoenician purple; cedar wood from
Lebanon, unassailable by worms; furs and iron from Asia Minor and
Armenia” (Ancient Egypt and Assyria, by G. Maspero, page 271).
The bas-reliefs, alabaster slabs, and sculptured monuments found in these
recovered palaces serve in a remarkable manner to confirm the Old
Testament history of the kings of Israel. The appearance of the ruins
shows that the destruction of the city was due not only to the assailing foe
but also to the flood and the fire, thus confirming the ancient prophecies
concerning it. “The recent excavations,” says Rawlinson, “have shown that
fire was a great instrument in the destruction of the Nineveh palaces.
Calcined alabaster, charred wood, and charcoal, colossal statues split
through with heat, are met with in parts of the Nineveh mounds, and attest
the veracity of prophecy.”
Nineveh in its glory was (Jonah 3:4) an “exceeding great city of three days’
journey”, i.e., probably in circuit. This would give a circumference of about
60 miles. At the four corners of an irregular quadrangle are the ruins of
Kouyunjik, Nimrud, Karamless and Khorsabad. These four great masses of
ruins, with the whole area included within the parallelogram they form by
lines drawn from the one to the other, are generally regarded as composing
the whole ruins of Nineveh.